July 2nd, 2018 – In response to the federal government’s unfunding of Cost Sharing Reductions, Colorado is changing the way it calculates premiums on Silver plans next year for Coloradan’s whose incomes qualify them for reduced rates.
For the 2019 plan year, the Colorado Division of Insurance requires carriers to load the cost of the Cost Sharing Reductions onto silver plans acquired through Connect for Health Colorado.
Because the Silver plans are the plans that federal tax subsidies are indexed from, by front loading the costs for the Cost Sharing Reductions into the Silver plans, it will increase the size of tax credits that the 100,000 eligible Coloradans receive for all plans sold through the Connect for Health Colorado exchange.
Plans sold off of the exchange won’t be silver-loaded, providing evenly balanced costs on the Bronze, Silver and Gold level plans for the roughly 300,000 Coloradans who make too much to be eligible for federal tax credits.
The Colorado Division of Insurance is to release rate filings for individual plans by July 13th, although the final approval for the 2019 plans is not expected until this Fall. The DOI said that they expect to have the same insurers in 2019 as we have in 2018.
